One of the most famous bears this side of Jellystone Park has moved to Alpine — but just for a few days — on his way to a permanent home.

Meatball, aka the Glendale Bear and Glen Bearian, was trapped early Wednesday in the Los Angeles suburbs, where he has been showing up for months and gaining star status on TV and the Internet. More than 28,000 people follow the @TheGlendaleBear Twitter feed run by a Glendale woman on the bear’s behalf.

“WHAT THE?!?!?! I just woke up somewhere near San Diego in a room with a jacuzzi and big ol’ pile of food,” the bear’s online persona said in a Tweet on Wednesday afternoon.

The Department of Fish and Game said Meatball was spotted this week around La Canada Flintridge — including in a swimming pool — and was captured on video in at least two locations. That was too much for state officials, who have been concerned about the bear’s bold moves for months.

Correction

The original story incorrectly referred to Meatball as a brown bear. While he is colored brown, he is a black bear.

In response, a warden baited a culvert trap with bacon and honey, capturing the bear at about 4 a.m. on Ocean View Boulevard in La Canada Flintridge.

Meatball was carted to Lions, Tigers & Bears, a licensed animal sanctuary in Alpine, Wednesday afternoon and said to be “safe and secure and resting comfortably.”

Founder and director Bobbi Brink said her new ward is about 550 pounds and “a beautiful bear.” She said the publicity he brings “gives us the opportunity (to) teach people why it’s so important not to feed wildlife. … You can see how driven this bear is.”

Fish and Game spokesman Andrew Hughan said Meatball started showing up around Glendale roughly nine months ago and was first captured in April.

“We took him back to the forest and then a couple months later, he came back. Then we captured him again in July and then he came back about four days ago, and we captured him again,” Hughan said. “That’s the third strike.”

Fish and Game officials typically euthanize “habituated” bears, but Hughan said Meatball isn’t your average bear.

“This is a special animal,” he said. “We don’t relocate bears because clearly it doesn’t work. But (the department) is very sensitive to the public perception of this bear, with the Twitter feed and website and the T-shirts so we decided that if it was possible to safely capture and secure the animal, then we would.”

Meatball’s fame is partly due to Sarah Aujero, a 29-year-old Glendale resident who works in the recording industry and grew up watching rerun cartoons of Yogi Bear — the lovable rascal known for stealing picnic baskets in Jellystone Park.

“It all started back in March when I was watching the news like other people here in Glendale and hearing about reports of a bear in the area, breaking into people’s garages and into their refrigerators and eating Costco meatballs,” Aujero said.

“It was a weekly thing where he would come every garbage day. I thought this bear was very smart — extraordinary. (There were) lots of stories about the bear just acting with human characteristics: He would be hungry, so he would climb a car so he could reach oranges on a tree.”

Aujero said she didn’t want the bear to get hurt or to be put down because people did something stupid around it.

“This bear is funny, and I started the Twitter account so people could share in the humor,” Aujero said.

She said she’s never seen Glen Bearian — her pet name for the bear — in person but acting as his online persona has become an around-the-clock affair as she fields messages from around the globe.

“Day and night, I am getting ‘bear hugs,’ and ‘I love you Glen Bearian,’” she said. “I think people know it’s not really a bear (on Twitter), but they like to play along.”